This invention relates to a method of preventing and/or reducing the increased crenated or spiculated red blood cells found in the blood of animals subjected to physical activity.
It has been surprisingly discovered that in contrast to the normal population of circulating red blood cells (erthyrocytes) observed from the blood samples of resting horses, exercise induces a marked increase in the number of crenated or spiculated red blood cells in the blood of the horses. This red cell alteration that occurs in horses subjected to exercise has been previously unrecognized and its cause is presently unknown. The same increase in the percentage of crenated cells is believed to occur in other animals including humans who have undergone exercise.
An increase in red blood cell spiculation may accelerate destruction of the cells and promote a "sport anemia" analogous to that observed in humans. In addition, the spiculated cells were confirmed by scanning electron microscopy to be echinocytes which are characterized by a cell membrane of reduced deformability. The deformability of the red blood cell membrane is important in the larger arteries because it allows greater fluidity of the red cells which changes the blood into an emulsion of low apparent viscosity, but it is also of critical importance at the microcirculatory level where the red blood cells must travel through the capillaries with a smaller diameter than their own. Hence a decrease in red blood cell deformability not only increases the apparent viscosity of the blood and, thus, augments the total resistance to flow, but also reduces capillary blood flow, tissue perfusion and tissue oxygenation.